About Us

Our story

We didn't set out to open a shop

We set out to solve our own problem.

When our first child arrived, we bought what everyone buys. Bright things. Loud things. Things with a recommended age printed on the box. Most of it wasn't badly made — it just didn't work. It held their attention for a week, maybe two, and then lived in a basket by the sofa.

So we'd go back and try again. Standing in an aisle reading the back of a box, trying to guess which of these would actually get played with. Scrolling late at night through stores that all sold the same forty products with the same stock photos. We got it wrong more often than we got it right.

What we wanted was a shop that had already done that thinking — run by people who had been standing exactly where we were standing. We couldn't find one. So we built it.

Montesstorytime is the store we wish we'd had when we became parents. That's the whole idea.

What we noticed

The toys our children came back to weren't the ones that lit up and sang. They were the ones that let them do something. Stack. Sort. Pour. Lace. Climb. Help make dinner. A wooden ring on a peg held more attention than anything with a battery in it — and it was still in use a year later.

That turned out to have a name. Montessori educators have been saying it for a century: give a child something real to do, then get out of the way.

How we choose what we sell

We curate Montessori-inspired toys and furniture for children from birth to age four. Every item has to answer three questions before it earns a place:

• Does it give the child something real to do? Hands-on work — the kind of focused play Dr. Maria Montessori called “the work of the child.” Not entertainment delivered at them.
• Will it still be interesting in a year? We favour open-ended materials that get rediscovered at each new stage, rather than the ones that peak in week one.
• Would we give it to our own child? Simple materials, no batteries, no screens, and nothing that does the playing for them. If we wouldn't put it in our own home, it isn't here.

Why “Montesstorytime”?

Because the best moments of early childhood happen in two places: on the floor playing, and in a lap being read to. Our Story & Play collection brings the two together — materials meant to be explored while you narrate, name, and read along.